In this column, the (usual, but not always) subject is rules. Rather than reference generic situations, I try whenever possible to offer illustrations from leagues in which I play or have familiarity with to reinforce the points. Sometimes they are positive examples, but other times, not. This is one of the latter.
Last week in this space, I observed the differences in how two major industry showcase leagues – LABR and Tout Wars – were handling the impact of the many expected disabled list moves for Thursday’s Opening Day not being announced by the MLB clubs in advance.
LABR deftly worked around the issue by creating an Expected Disabled List and designated the several dozen major leaguers known to be injured that way the week before the season began. This enabled league owners to acquire replacements during the initial FAAB period the prior Sunday – with the confidence they would not be forced to release a player on Opening Day if all MLB DL moves were not announced far enough in advance to be reflected by the league management system.
Tout Wars, on the other hand, decided to go the traditional route. That meant an injured player could not be put on the fantasy DL until the day after he was placed on the DL by his MLB team. The time gap is the standard by the league’s stats provider to reflect such MLB roster changes.
As one might imagine, Tout’s approach led to some grumbling. Yet some owners still decided to go ahead and gamble by adding backfill on Sunday, while knowing they could get caught, unable to yet DL their injured player(s) by Thursday.
A key point to remember is that every player acquired via FAAB must be active the first week – without exception. Of course, a corresponding drop is required – though the timing of it caused additional confusion.
When are drops required?
Just prior to the first Sunday waiver period, there was an email chain among Touts which reflected considerable misunderstanding. Some league members did not know of (or perhaps forgot) a Tout practice which differed from the wording in its constitution. The written rules stated that when replacement players were acquired, the corresponding players must be dropped “at the same time”.
The intent was to ensure active rosters always remained legal. The league management system requires transactions for additions to also create an opening on the active roster. However, that could simply be a move from active to reserves, enabling an owner more time to decide who to release.
In Tout practice, these corresponding drops are NOT required to be made until the roster lock time. In a normal week, that gap is just 17 hours or so, but with the Thursday opening, this initial window was over three days.
Though I quickly made a wording change recommendation to clean up this area of the constitution – which was readily accepted – this Sunday clarification did not help those owners with injured players who were assessing the risk that their DL moves may not be reflected on the site until Friday. It just gave them more time to wait before setting their roster – but it wouldn’t change the key trigger – when MLB teams decided to make their DL announcements.
Like All-Star break, but different
This Sunday-to-Thursday window is similar to the mid-July All-Star Week – with one huge difference. (Almost) no one gets injured during the July break, and in the rare case a DL move would be warranted in that time – a late Sunday injury or perhaps an oblique pull by an over-swinger during the Home Run Derby – which almost no one would notice or care about. If the Thursday DL deadline is missed for a stray player in July, it would surely be ignored in Tout as the isolated anomaly it would be.
On the other hand, here we are talking about several dozen players who were destined to open the season on either the 10-day or 60-day DL. This case definitely warranted special attention.
While I personally strongly favored the LABR Expected Disabled List approach, which was documented well ahead of the first FAAB period as I previously noted, the Tout stance was also communicated in advance. At least, it was consistent with the rules and was the same for all owners.
That is, it was consistent until Thursday morning. Then all hell broke loose.
Two changes Opening morning
Just three hours prior to first pitch, the Tout board communicated to members that if proof could be presented (even via tweets) that a player had been placed on his MLB team’s DL before the start of the first game, the league’s SWAT would work to get it reflected by the stats provider.
For their part, the provider, OnRoto, committed to add Thursday morning DL changes every 15 minutes up to the league freeze time. In this case, there would no longer necessarily be the standard one-day delay in reflecting DL moves.
However, no one seemed to think about those unable to sit by their computer or phone for multiple hours that morning or worse, those who did not acquire the necessary roster backfill on Sunday due to fear they would be forced to release a more valuable player on Thursday.
Doubling down on the confusion, at 90 minutes prior to lineups locking, the board abruptly announced its second change on the morning of Opening Day itself – this one more significant than the first.
Effective immediately, the five Tout leagues would be under a “Common Sense DL ruling”. Owners (at least those who were available to do so) would be allowed to nominate players to be placed on the OnRoto DL “if it’s patently obvious they’ll be placed on the MLB DL sometime today.”
Who and how they defined “patently obvious” was open to interpretation. At that point, there was no time for discourse. There was barely enough clock remaining for quick individual action.
Doing the right thing?
From the big picture perspective, Tout decided at the very last moment to implement a “common sense” approach, which at first blush seemed the same as LABR had taken from the very start. By the way, a majority of the Tout board also compete in LABR, so were aware long in advance of LABR’s own brand of “common sense” ruling.
Normally, I would applaud doing what seemed to be the right thing. However, in this case, I am not clapping. By waiting, the Tout board created additional problems, ones that were avoided in LABR because the latter was ahead of the curve.
First of all, making rules changes on the fly is not the right way to run any league, in my opinion. Even if you don’t get it 100 percent perfect the first time, it is far better to stick to your ruling than reverse field at the very end. That was especially the case here, since Tout members were unable to properly plan for it during the prior FAAB period on Sunday.
There is no doubt in my mind that some owners may not have picked up injury replacements on Sunday because they feared – based on the original ruling from the board – that they may have been forced to drop a player – perhaps the more valuable injured one – on Thursday. Though Tout DLs are unlimited in size, reserves are restricted to just four players – leaving little to no maneuvering room for some owners. For example, many of the Touts use reserve spots to stash top prospects not yet called up.
Altering the course a second time with just 90 minutes before roster lock only benefitted those who had a ready replacement, perhaps because they took the risk on Sunday – and were able to successfully document their proposed roster changes in the remaining window before first pitch.
On the other hand, those who took the original ruling at face value and expected that Thursday MLB DL moves would not be reflected immediately on the site – the business as usual approach – may have been disadvantaged by the late changes in course.
By making these Thursday rulings, the board probably thought they were helping, when they really tilted the playing field – never a good thing, in my opinion.
Disclaimer: The reality is that one is not needed. I am not angry because I was burned. In fact, I did not have any disabled players on my National League Tout Wars roster this past week. However, just because it did not mess up my own team doesn’t mean I am not sympathetic to those who may have been affected. And more importantly, the situation just wasn’t handled properly.
Granted, this was a short week, with just three games scheduled for most MLB teams. Still, we have all seen league titles come down to the last point of the final day of the season. However, in the bigger picture, the precedent of making rules changes on the fly is by far the more dangerous takeaway from this.
No offense is intended to any of the individuals involved, all of whom are long-time colleagues and personal friends. Even so, they should not be immune from scrutiny and even constructive criticism when warranted. In my opinion, this is one such time.
Both leagues got it right – but Tout really didn’t – because they exposed other problems by being so slow and clumsy in their multiple attempts to address the original need, one which was known well in advance.
Brian Walton was the 2009 National League Tout Wars champion, scoring the most points in the league’s history. He also holds the all-time NL Tout single-season records for wins and saves. His work can also be found daily at TheCardinalNation Follow Brian on Twitter.
